u/Eddy_west_side

It isn’t something that crossed my mind on my first watch of the show, but now whenever I rewatch Season 6, I think to myself that she sounds as close to what Ted is looking for in a partner as anyone else who appears in the show up to that point. She’s very intelligent, classy, plays a string instrument, and is like him, a hopeless romantic.

All of the things she tells Barney that she wants are things Ted has wanted since the very first episode.

Ted doesn’t break Bro Code, which is something we already knew about him by the point Nora was introduced, but did anyone just speculate that she would later be written to have a romance with Ted as they are both hopeless romantics who want to get married and start a family?

Feel free to hate her as a person, but she was essentially an antagonist for a whole season. Her being a love interest for Ted while also the head of the protest against his architecture project made for an incredibly engaging story. His dream of having a wife and kids pitted up against his dream of building a skyscraper in New York City going head to head feels like the perfect obstacle for Ted when his life was finally beginning to get stagnant with his stable teaching career, one-off dates, and basically neither of his dreams getting closer to being achieved. Then suddenly both dreams come in view at roughly the same time and he has to pick between a life with Zoey, with a high likelihood of having kids not too long after , or being able to look up at his own building.

The story arc was great. The actress was good enough. I don’t think there were any problems with the performance. I’m moreso impressed by how they managed to basically do a villain in a sitcom about a guy trying to meet the mother of his children.

In my honest opinion, Maleficent was brought back FAR too early to matter. Since her defeat (and supposed death at the end of the original KH), she has appeared in 4 titles: KH2, Coded, DDD, and KH3. And since her return she has accomplished…literally nothing.
- KH2: failed to regain control over the Heartless
- Coded: failed to get control over the datascape
- DDD: failed to overthrow Mickey and Minnie in Disney Castle
- KH3: failed to find the Black Box or the Book of Prophecies

Since her revival, she has been nothing more than a distraction for our heroes. The Team Rocket to Sora’s Ash. She shows up, calls Sora a loser, and then runs away for 4 whole games. This is an egregious fall from grace because at the start of the series, she was the big bad for most of the game.

If she hadn’t been revived at the start of KH2, virtually nothing about the story changes. No character arcs are affected, except Pete’s and that’s in a good way.

Imagine this:

In KH2, Sora wakes up and goes to see Yen Sid. There, he encounters Pete, an old nemesis of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. He employs his command over the weak early game Heartless, Sora beats them, and then he runs away. He then spends the rest of KH2, Coded, and DDD trying and failing to get a leg up on our heroes. Doesn’t this seem more in line with Pete by himself than Maleficent with Pete’s help? He’s a silly little cartoon thug, not “The Mistress of All EVIL!”

We get to see Maleficent in BBS, at which point she becomes a VERY cool cameo. We haven’t seen her since her memory projection in Castle Oblivion! What a pleasant surprise! Then Ux rolls around we get to see another data version of her…or wait…NO! This is Maleficent from the FUTURE?! How much more exciting would this have been if we thought Maleficent to still be dead all the way up until Ux?

We can then skip the entire search for the Black Box in KH3 because it doesn’t go anywhere and is pointless when we don’t even see how Luxu gets access to it. Maleficent takes up valuable screentime that could’ve gone to developing characters that actually impact the story in KH3.

Then at some point AFTER KH3, we get Diablo appearing to someone with a connection to Maleficent (probably the 3 fairies still), and she returns to present day with knowledge from the Age of Fairy Tales, now being extremely relevant with all the Ux characters making their way to Sora’s time.

Wouldn’t THIS have been far more useful placement for Maleficant’s character?

Two of my favorite shows of all time are How I Met Your Mother and the Walking Dead. I had a thought recently as I watched the Walking Dead about what would happen if the zombie virus from that show started spreading in New York while the gang lived there. I’ve ordered the five core members of the group based on how well I think they’d survive living in a zombie apocalypse with 5 being the lowest chances of survival and 1 being the highest chances of survival.

5. Lily - Lily lacks any qualities needed for surviving in an apocalypse, I can see a world for each character where they not only survive the initial outbreak, but learn to thrive in the zombie apocalypse since these are all fictional characters, but in terms of the physical advantages and skills they currently possess to aid them in survival, Lily doesn’t have any. She’s a pretty girl, which might earn her some sympathy from random guys trying to get in her pants, but that luck will run out when they realize she’s married.

6. Marshall - the reason Marshall is next to go is because outside of his physical advantage, being the tallest and most experienced in combat based on his roughhousing with his brothers, everyone else just has better skills needed for survival. His personality is not conducive for the end of the world. He also has an Achilles heel in the form of Lily. She absolutely will be placed in situations where she would need rescuing and Marshall would obviously put himself at risk for her. Basically, I think Lily gets herself and Marshall killed.

7. Barney - Barney is cut throat and self-interested, which makes him good at surviving. He is adaptable, clever, and can run a whole marathon without training. Just that last feat alone makes me think he can get by for a good while just by running away. Barney’s main downside is that he’s is the last person who would pick up a weapon and get his hands dirty. If he can get past this, he’d be ranked much higher, but as it is now, he’s the middle of the road for this group.

8. Ted - Originally, I was going to rank Ted the lowest, but when I started thinking about what he has to offer, I realized Ted actually has A LOT of qualities that are beneficial to himself and other people around him, making him a valuable asset that others would want to keep around. For starters, Ted has a talent for being prepared. When the big hurricane hit New York, Ted had an entire house stocked with food and supplies in Westchester. Yes, a tree fell on the house, but you can’t account for EVERYTHING. We also know Ted is good at traveling light with the essentials making him good for supply run missions. As an architect with a love for New York, I have no doubt in my mind that he’d know exactly which building to go into or occupy for the group’s best chances of survival in any given moment. What’s holding him back from being number 1? Obviously his overall lack of physical strength or athleticism on top of him being a very vocal pacifist and gun dissenter. Like Barney, if he could get past his aversion to guns, he’d be ranked higher, and in this case #1.

9. Robin - Of course it’s Robin. Just having gun handling skills puts Robin far ahead anyone else in the group. It’s extremely crucial to be able to handle weapons to survive especially right at the outbreak. She is very athletic and fiercely aggressive. She also has the pretty girl advantage Lily has, but assuming the zombie outbreak happens before S8, Robin can absolutely use this to her advantage, not because she needs someone to fight her battles for her, but because it increases her chances of survival. Robin is shown to be adaptable as someone who learned to live in a new city with no connections to anyone. With her particular set of traits and skills, she stands above everyone else as a clear winner and the most likely to survive the zombie apocalypse.

What is everyone else’s thoughts?

Noivern is one of, if not my favorite pokemon (depending on the day). I want to use it on a doubles team, and preferable with Boomburst. Any suggestions on how to make the most of this pokemon on a team?

None of its pokedex entries make me think this is a ground type pokemon. It isn’t known for digging tunnels like Onix. It doesn’t bask in the dirt. It’s not made of sand, or eats sand, or controls sand. It doesn’t move the earth. It’s literally just a rock with arms. Onix makes perfect sense to be a rock/ground type. It’s a rock that SHAPES the ground. Geodude, on the other hand…IS JUST A ROCK!

Does anyone genuinely think this pokemon makes any sense to be a rock/ground type instead of just being a rock type? If you do, please rationalize it for me because its typing makes zero sense to me.